British Columbia Municipal Elections 2014

[Citizen Hats]

Vision Vancouver nominations completed today . NDP slate won from appearances, defeating uncoordinated Liberals and others.  Only Parks board and School Board up for consideration, council not being contested, with new council candidate Niki Sharma moving up form Parks Board to fill in the Council slate of eight out of ten slots.  Some Liberals expressing great disappointment with rather open NDP slate activity.

Otherwise, the NPA's mystery mayoral candidate remains mysterious, as the board have yet to announce who they have already chosen. 

Elsewhere, Surrey is going to get interesting. It is rumored that the secretive and oligarchic processes of Surrey First have already selected a replacement for Dianne Watts, who will quite likely seek federal office. Formerly SF now independent councilor Barinder Rasode is seeking to run as in independent, bringing aboard such mysteriously opposed campaign talent as Mark Marissen and Moe Shihota. 

[Citizen Hats]

Which party is Watts going to run for? I think she's a Conservative, right?

Is Gregor Robertson running for re-election? What are his chances of winning?

Watts could run red or blue, but I've heard through the grapevine that she is going for the Tories. 

Robertson is running again and I figure he would win. The NPA is perennially a mess. They recently expelled two school-board members after they rather sociopathically argued that more support for trans-students would be bad for the property market.  Urban agriculture and bikelanes are their Benghazi of sorts, so it's hard for people outside their bubble to take their rants seriously.  They are certainly a threat, and a well funded on at that, but they are their own worst enemy.  Left-wing COPE will likely run a mayoral candidate, which could hurt Vision, but COPE has been caving in on itself for some time now. Tim Lewis has driven out many of the less radical members. 

[Citizen Hats]

COPE is running a mayoral candidate? Oh dear. I know Robertson is a bit too right wing, but it could allow the NPA to win. But, at least they wouldn't do well on council. Are the Greens running a candidate? Perhaps Carr?

The Green Party in Vancouver has a history of not tilting at windmills, which is the secret of their surprising staying power. They've made deals and run strategically to maximize their influence.  They're running three candidates for council, but I've heard no word of a Mayoral candidate. Interestingly, one of their candidates, Pete Fry, is the son of the Hon. Hedy Fry. With Vision only running 8 candidates, that's a wise choice. They have much higher name recognition than COPE, and given cope's self-alienating tendencies perhaps the Greens will displace them

[Citizen Hats]

http://www.straight.com/news/676081/left-front-considers-ousting-tim-louis-cope-chair

Coalition of Progressive Electors leader and all-around True-leftist Tim Louis's leadership of COPE under threat from further leftists, as though COPE was in any more need of internal turmoil

[Citizen Hats]

http://www.biv.com/article/20140714/BIV0109/140719972/npa-appoints-kirk-lapointe-as-vancouver-mayoral-candidate

NPA announces previously secret mayoral candidate, media exec, former CBC Ombudsman and UEL Resident Kirk LaPoint

[Citizen Hats]

Can someone explain Vancouver municipal parties?

Vision is a center left brokerage party, the NPA is an anti socialist coalition party, and todays COPE is a leftist fringe. Given the strength of the center, the NPA-BC LIberal model doesn't really work anymore. Vision voters are more pragmatic NDP and all but the most cranky Liberals (including a great many BC Liberals. NPA voters are typically conservatives or more right wing Liberals. Who knows what a COPE voter looks like these days, and is suspect that the greens will take more votes. Of course, it wasn't always this way

[Citizen Hats]

That's the impression I get. From what I understand, Roberston did not particularly enjoy his time as an NDP MLA.  He's in that category of center left which can go either way, and is certainly friendly to both.   Despite the entreaties of the Liberal Party, however, he will in all likelihood not be running with us

[Citizen Hats]

Some believe that Vision can really be explained by Gregor Robertson's old juice company, Happy Planet.  It's the juice that everyone assumes is organic, but surprisingly isn't

[Citizen Hats]

It could very well be the margin, though Vision is very energetically trying to tar LaPointe for comments on bike lanes, the Arbutus Corridor negotiations, the TransMountain Pipeline, and the Broadway Line

LaPointe's responses haven't been particularly well crafted. Though he is articulate, and intelligent, the easy sound bite takaway from what he's written in response is that LaPointe is indecisive, and stands up for little guy corporations like Kinder Morgan and Canadian Pacific being bullied by big-bad city hall.

Does he say that? of course not, but Vision will twist the knife as they are deft at doing.

[Citizen Hats]

Well, it would appear that Gregor has it.

I don't see how the NPA have gained any traction. They've said only a few substantive things, they aren't running a terribly well oiled operation, and they've said a few not terribly well placed things as well. 

Wong hasn't done very much to help them.

As for elsewhere, Corrigan is probably going to coast to victory, despite my distaste for him. 

Surrey is an interesting race. I haven't been on the ground, but it's three way race to succeed Watts. There have been some rather vicious false-flag videos going around the internet trying to seem like they're from McCallum

[Citizen Hats]

Someone has been telling Chinese families in Burnaby that the city is injecting their children with a gay-serum to make them gay. This has been traced back to canvassers for the opposition 'Burnaby-First' party.   

http://www.burnabynow.com/bbyelxn/news/gay-serum-rumour-riles-burnaby-politics-1.1490943

[Citizen Hats]

Well, the pollsters are expecting increased turnout. The theory is that Wong has activated voters, but not converted existing voters. So in a usual election, I'd expect the NPA to bottom out at 40%, but with increased turnout going to Wong they could go into the mid thirties.  I expect Robertson will win by ten points.

As for council, polling has it that Carr is the most popular candidate, followed by Affleck, a slew of Visionites, and everyone else.  So we could see a minority council or a narrow vision council, which should be interesting.

[Citizen Hats]

Victoria is uninteresting. Dean Fortin will sweep to victory again, though the amagamation vote *could* be interesting.  A friend of mine is running for council, Andrew Reeve, may very well win a seat.

Surrey is where the interesting race is, where there are three viable candidates.

Linda Hepner  Hepner is the anointed successor to Dianne Watts, the retiring and extremely popular incumbent Mayor for 'Surrey First'. She's running on a platform of continuing things as they are. Surrey First is widely credited with respectable development of the city, though crime is an issue. Hepner is a former municipal civil servant, and was at one point on former mayor Doug McCallum's team in council.  Watts is leaving for the Federal Conservative nomination, though Surrey-First is not a federally-partisan organization. Amusingly, the joke has been that her main policy plank is building a ferriswheel on Surrey's *very industrial* waterfront.

Doug McCallum McCallum is the former Mayor of Surrey, defeated by Watts several terms ago. He is running on a keep-taxes-low and tough-on-crime platform.  McCallum is known to have associations with the Federal Conservatives.  Incidentally, I quite nearly worked for his campaign in a mercenary capacity.

Barinder Rasode Rasode is an independent councilor, formerly member of Surrey First before she and Watts had a political falling out.  She is associated with the NDP.  She is running a somewhat more thoughtful law-and-order campaign, as in one that is willing to commit sociology, but is still mostly about Surrey's terrible crime rate. I was also nearly involved in this campaign.  Interestingly enough, organizers include both Moe Shihota, who is among the least respectable NDP hacks, and Mark Marissen, among the grimier BC Liberal ones.

[Citizen Hats]

I never thought to try, given then dominance of Surrey-First  

http://www.surrey.ca/files/COS_2011_Election_Results_by_Voting_Place.pdf

Upon closer inspection, Watts won every poll

[Citizen Hats]

my point being that a map would be boring

[Citizen Hats]

I've emailed them

[Citizen Hats]

http://www.insightswest.com/news/extremely-tight-mayoral-race-developing-in-surrey/

Tight race in Surrey, say polls

[Citizen Hats]

Is it safe to say that Hepner is the left wing candidate, McCallum the right wing candidate, and Rasode is more... populist?

Surrey politics is not split along senior partisanships, though McCallum has ties to the Tories and Rasode has ties to the NDP.  McCallum and Hepner and Hepner and Rasode have all at one time been on the same ticket.  The incumbent Surrey-First ticket includes Tories like Watts and NDP like Villaneuve and formerly Rasode. 

That being said, I wouldn't call Hepner the 'left-wing' candidate, but she's perhaps the most 'stay the course' on the existing form of development in Surrey. Rasode has been backed by organized labour. 

[Citizen Hats]

Is it safe to say the race in Burnaby is primarily between Corrigan and Daren Hancott?

Yes, having done a quick tour through town I was surprised at the number of BF signs.  If the gay-serum allegations are true than they are very much a horrible party

[Citizen Hats]

I think it's an optimization thing.  Parties don't expect to take all ten votes, so only having 8 candidates reduces the possibility that the party loses seats because the votes were spread to thinly. Vision knows that some people who will mostly vote for them will cast a vote or two for  Carr (maybe half) or Affleck or what have you

[Citizen Hats]

Strange; I would think it be common for people to vote for an entire slate. It has happened before where one party has won an entire slate.

Anyways, next question:

It looks like Malcolm Brodie is going to easily be re-election in Richmond? His main opponent appears to be Richard Lee who is running a (right wing) populist campaign, but his party has no seats on council and is only running one candidate.

There are several parties running four council, two of which have seats. Do you know anything about Richmond Community Coalition and Richmond First? I suppose they both support the mayor.

First bit: Polling has Adrianne Car getting 50% of the vote, and most of that has got to be otherwise Vision voters.  Furthermore, Vision may have only ran 8 candidates as a concession to the Green party to keep them off the mayoral ballot.  In 2011, it was part of an explicit coalition strategy with COPE, with three spots left for COPE's three candidates who all lost because not all that many people actually like COPE.

Second Bit: I'm not up to date on Richmond

[Citizen Hats]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/surrey-election-seen-as-dry-run-for-federal-vote-in-2015/article21583649/

Nonsensical headline, but does contain some interesting details